Sleepover
by vinnie2757
Summary: 'Is this "Everybody Crawls into Murdoc's Bed Night" and I wasn't informed'


**Title: **Sleepover

**Fandom: **Gorillaz

**Author: ** Me, Vinnie2757

**Genre:** Phase one, fluff

**Character/Pairing: **Murdoc, Noodle, 2D, mentions of Russel and Paula, no pairings

**Rating: **K

**Warnings:** none (for once), they don't even swear

**Summary: **'Is this "Everybody Crawls into Murdoc's Bed Night" and I wasn't informed?'

**A/N: **A short drabble because I don't want to finish the hell au haha. Enjoy, lovelies~!

**Sleepover**

Murdoc startles awake to something warm pressing against his back. Hot air puffs on the back of his shoulder, clammy through the cotton of his T-shirt, and he grunts. He contemplates, for the space between two sleep-muddied heartbeats, swatting at it, but he reasons, in that same between-second moment, that a zombie would not have crawled into bed behind him and pressed close enough that its heartbeat – which a zombie would not have, on account of it being dead – thumps against the jutting bone of his shoulder blade. It's a small warmth and weight, anyway, and he recognises the artificial strawberry smell almost as readily as he recognises the smell of his cigarettes.

Behind him, Noodle garbles something he has come to understand is an apology. Grunting again, her shoves himself up onto an elbow, then up onto his wrist, and Noodle wriggles through the gap, squeezing herself into the space between him and the wall.

He collapses back onto the mattress, wrist stiff and sore, and she drags his arm tight around her, holding his hand to keep it in place. He lets her pull him into position, only wriggling once to settle his shoulder as her head drops, sugar-sweet and half-asleep, against his bicep. She should have a noseful of his armpit, but she doesn't seem to mind too much. After a prod of her laminate-cold toes, his leg hitches over hers, and she giggles as his leg hair brushes her calf.

Settled now, with her content to be completely wrapped up in his limbs, he asks if she wants to talk about it. His word are slurring a bit, accent dragging through every clogged gutter this side of Crawley, and she hums a little, buries her face in the crook of his arm. He hears her breathing, and he makes a note to check out her room in the morning, and maybe smash the locks on the window if he smells better.

(It's maybe half-one in the morning. He won't remember shit by the time he wakes properly, when the sun is already too-high and shining bright through the tears in the workman's sheet he tacked to the window. But he'll remember that Noodle was in his bed, and when he finds her in the kitchen drinking strawberry milk because Russel won't let her have chocolate unless it's a weekend, she'll drag him by the wrist to the weird stain on the wall that makes a noise when he pokes at it with the pole he pulled off the gurney in the infirmary and keeps for zombie-fighting purposes.)

Quietly, she begins talking, in Japanese, but he's beginning to understand a few words here or there, manages to make out something about a monster and a guitar and he wonders if she watched _Pick of Destiny_. He doesn't tune her out exactly, but her words grow distant, and she continues talking long after he's asleep. It's almost a lullaby. She's a good singer, would be fantastic, if they could teach her how to pronounce sunshine properly.

He wakes again a few hours later to another warm body against his back. This one is longer and not as warm, but just as familiar.

'Is this "Everybody Crawls into Murdoc's Bed Night" and I wasn't informed?' he snorts, blinking to adjust to the darkness.

Noodle grumbles, pressing her face against his chest. 2D apologises against his nape. Murdoc hums into his pillow, and asks if he wants to talk about his nightmare.

He finds himself listening a little more intently to 2D's nightmares, because the man speaks English, and asks questions, and his tales can be quite gruesome. It's all those zombie films he watches. He turns his head to show 2D that he _is_ listening, and finds 2D's forehead pressed against his temple. Their noses almost brush. Murdoc considers moving, but doesn't. His neck aches, but he's comfortable, so that's that. 2D glances up at him, having been staring at the shadows between their bodies, and flinches; his red eye, of course.

Tonight, as 2D tells it, he dreamt of Paula, as has been the case for months, but the twist is not one Murdoc has heard before, though he wonders why not.

'And, like, she'd slept with you, but it wasn't just a, um, a quick, uh, it wasn't a quickie in the bathroom? She, um, she attacked you, Muds, and she was trying to kill you. I thought – I was scared she'd done it. So I thought. I mean. I thought I'd come check. I didn't mean to wake y' or nothin'.'

He's talking quickly, his accent slipping and sliding down muddy hills and through dank alleys, and Murdoc is sure he's invented a new language in some parts.

The arm Noodle is sleeping on lifts and his hand folds, offering his wrist. Noodle stirs briefly, tucking closer into Murdoc's shoulder, and gives him more room to crease his elbow. 2D's arm reaches over them both and wraps around his wrist, fingers pressing against tendons. Murdoc can feel his hand numbing, but 2D seems happier to have a measure of Murdoc's pulse. If he's got a beating heart, he's alive. That's enough to send him back to sleep in a slobbering, mumbling mess against his neck. At least he's not kicking this time.

A single bed – because Murdoc only needs a single in the Kong building proper, since he sleeps more often in the camper in the car park, and there's no point spending three times as much on sheets for a large bed when, as he had (stupidly, perhaps) thought, he would be the only one sleeping in it – is not really a good place for two grown men, one of whom is over six feet tall, and a small child to lie in together, but somehow they make it work. Noodle is tucked so tight into the space between Murdoc and the wall that he's lost all feeling in his lower leg from having his knee pressed into the plaster (which was a hack-job, he can tell, and he'll redo that as soon as he can find the time), and half of 2D is totally uncovered by the duvet, because neither of them have the heart to tug it away from Noodle, who is turning into a right old cover-hog.

Murdoc has hot breath on the back of his neck and on his chest, a foot that occasionally kicks him in the shin and a knee in the back of his thigh. 2D's arm is surprisingly heavy for such a bony limb, resting heavily against his side, and his fingers refuse to let up the pressure on his pulse. Everything smells a little stale, a lot like cigarettes and cheap soap and unwashed sheets, dust and grime and decay, but it's starting to smell more and more like them, like plucked strings and splintered drumsticks and the whispered echoes of soft words.

But somehow, in this tight, uncomfortable space, he manages to sleep. If Russell shows up, he can fuck right off.

(In the morning, Russel finds neither 2D nor Noodle in their beds, and the latter sends him on a trail around the building, growing increasingly more worried with every empty room. Murdoc's room is the last he thinks to check, and he throws the door open with a mouth open, ready to howl. But he pauses, mid-step, and slowly shuts his mouth. The three of them are tangled together so tightly it's hard to tell who has limbs where, but Noodle is safe and sound, and all three of them are dressed. They look comfortable, despite the dog-pile that is half-formed on Murdoc's chest, and no one stirs at his prolonged lingering. So he shuts the door quietly, and hurries off to find a camera before one of them wakes up and the moment is lost forever. Or until next week, when nightmares of zombies' moans and half-remembered laboratories herd the two youngest band members back into Murdoc's single bed for an impromptu sleepover.)

**NOTES::**

TBH, this probably takes place in the same universe as the Hell AU, where Murdoc becomes a hot dad and it becomes a total problem.

I like the idea that Murdoc has a guest room in the Kong building proper with a **single bed** and a wardrobe and not much else bc he's almost never there. (Though he only has that at all in case Noodle has a nightmare. 2D helps himself to the bed.)

I also like the idea that Murdoc is really handy and **good at DIY**. He says in Rise of the Ogre that he went through a multitude of jobs, and over a period of 20 years, you're going to end up in the building trade. He's probably good at keeping his homes intact, when he puts the thought into it.

Nerds sleeping are my favourite kind of nerds.

**Thanks for reading, lovelies. **


End file.
